CNN, YouTube To Host US Democratic Party Debate Tonight, July 23rd

The day has come. YouTube is to co-host, in partnership with CNN, a presidential debate tonight between all eight hopefuls for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination. It will be broadcast on CNN at 7pm EST from the city of Charleston in South Carolina.

According to YouTube’s figures, “more than 2,000 online videos were submitted to the site for consideration for the event,” of which CNN will determine two to three dozen fit for playback to all candidates present at the event.

YouTube will presumably have highlights from the debate; the site does not intend to change its distribution format for the evening by providing a live stream.

While there’s always a degree of pessimism harbored by the public about presidential races – well, politics in general, really – the YouTube-CNN-hosted debate has been publicized as unique enough to warrant some measure of interest among the American populace – at least more so than what’s been traditionally offered to television viewers across the country. The placement of average citizens’ queries front and center to be discussed live by candidates running for national office isn’t something done regularly, so it’s bound to catch a good number of eyes and ears that would otherwise pay no attention to such “theatrics”.

CNN’s Washington bureau chief, David Bohrman, divulged some particulars to the New York Times about what one can expect to see at the debate. He said that there had been relatively few questions submitted to the video hosting service in the weeks leading up to the event about the war in Iraq, and was surprised to find “how broad the age range was of the questioners” indeed was. He also emphasized the simplicity of production values in the majority of videos uploaded to the host site. Bohrman explained that the lack of complex submissions showed them to be “very focused” and intended to “force” candidates to address issues presented by citizens head-on.

It would certainly be foolish to expect the involvement of YouTube in a presidential debate to bring any momentous shift to political game in the US. There will no doubt be some efforts to “water down” topics to keep as much to the safe ground of established campaign messages as possible. But if there are only a few poignant moments of authenticity witnessed during the debate, it’ll no doubt be worth the effort. After all, Washington and change are pretty much antithetical. Anything that can force the two on paths bound for collision should help with the current state of affairs.

The CNN-YouTube debate will surely stick in viewers’ minds longer than would otherwise be the case in a “YouTube-less” environment, but there’s no reason to expect the effect to linger through to 2008. Of course, the announcement of a similar event orchestrated by YouTube and CNN for Republican candidates on Sept 17th may ensure that both productions stay fresh for an extended period of time. But it may not. We’ll just have to see how tonight’s arrangement turns out.